TOPLINE Billionaire Elon Musk has approached officials of a Texas county where SpaceX has a private launch site and rocket production facility about incorporating a new city to be called Starbase, officials said.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



<ul><li>Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño <a href="https://www.cameroncounty.us/spacex-incorporation-inquiry/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> Tuesday Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company, SpaceX, reached out about Musk’s interest in incorporating Boca Chica Village, where SpaceX is building its Starship rocket. </li></ul>



<ul><li>Treviño indicated the county is <a href="https://www.cameroncounty.us/spacex-incorporation-inquiry/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">open to incorporation</a>, but that the process must abide by all state incorporation statutes and said the county will process any petitions in line with the law.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Musk said Tuesday he’s hoping to incorporate “an area <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1366859619461570561?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">much larger </a>than Boca Chica.” </li></ul>



<ul><li>Musk previously posted <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1366848696298561536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1366848696298561536%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fembedly.forbes.com%2Fwidgets%2Fmedia.html%3Ftype%3Dtext2Fhtmlkey%3D3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935schema%3Dtwitterurl%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Felonmusk%2Fstatus%2F1366848696298561536image%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Fi.embed.ly%2F1%2Fimage3Furl3Dhttps253A252F252Fabs.twimg.com252Ferrors252Flogo46x38.png26key3D3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a mysterious statement</a> about creating a Texas city called Starbase on Tuesday, and later added it would be dog-friendly and led by <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1366857632372256770?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Doge</a>, a reference to the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/02/04/i-am-become-meme-destroyer-of-shorts-dogecoin-soars-again-as-elon-musk-returns-from-self-imposed-twitter-exile/">Dogecoin</a> meme cryptocurrency he endorsed last month.</li></ul>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Creating the city of Starbase, Texas&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1366848696298561536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



Musk, who&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates is worth nearly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=4bcf1dae7999">$164 billion</a>, is expanding his footprint in the Lone Star State. SpaceX also has a site in McGregor, a city halfway between Austin and Dallas, and this week, a job posting revealed the company is looking to build&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/02/elon-musks-spacex-to-open-a-factory-in-austin-job-posting-reveals/?sh=4720c17d383b">a manufacturing facility</a>&nbsp;in Austin. The Boring Company began hiring in the Austin area in November, and the city was named the location of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/07/22/teslas-next-gigafactory-will-be-in-austin-texas-and-musk-says-it-will-be-stunning/">Tesla’s next gigafactory</a>. Musk confirmed in December he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/2020/12/08/elon-musk-confirms-hes-moving-from-california-to-texas/?sh=41c0c6124948">moving to Texas</a>&nbsp;from California.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/02/elon-musks-spacex-to-open-a-factory-in-austin-job-posting-reveals/?sh=4720c17d383b">Elon Musk’s SpaceX To Open A Factory In Austin, Job Posting Reveals</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/2020/12/08/elon-musk-confirms-hes-moving-from-california-to-texas/?sh=41c0c6124948">Elon Musk Confirms He&#8217;s Moving From California To Texas</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/12/07/elon-musk-reportedly-relocated-his-foundation-to-texas-fueling-rumors-hell-move-there-too/?sh=2fd905c94f2a">Elon Musk Reportedly Relocated His Foundation To Texas, Fueling Rumors He’ll Move There Too</a> (Forbes)



By Carlie Porterfield, Forbes Staff

Billionaire Elon Musk Receives Axel Springer Award

Elon Musk Wants To Set Up A City Named Starbase Around His Texas Rocket Launch Site

Billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/16/elon-musks-spacex-raised-850-million-at-419point99-a-share.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;completed an $850 million fundraising round last week, as it looks to raise capital for its ambitious Starlink and Starship projects.&nbsp;



News of the funding was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/16/elon-musks-spacex-raised-850-million-at-419point99-a-share.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first reported</a>&nbsp;by CNBC, which said that the private company will now have a valuation of around $74 billion, citing people familiar with the financing. SpaceX did not immediately respond to&nbsp;Forbes’ request for comment.



The company raised new funds at $419.99 per share, per CNBC. That price is just a cent below $420 per share, potentially a reference to Elon Musk’s notorious&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter post</a>&nbsp;in 2018, when he joked that he would take Tesla private at $420 with “funding secured.”



Musk—who is the world’s second-richest person, behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—owned roughly 48% of SpaceX prior to this latest funding round, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ calculations.&nbsp;



It is not immediately clear if Musk’s ownership was diluted by the new round. If he managed to hold onto all 48%, his stake would now be worth about $32 billion—up from roughly $20 billion previously, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ estimates. That would boost Musk’s net worth by $12 billion—but that’s still not enough for him to pass Bezos and retake the spot of the richest person on the planet.&nbsp;



He is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=298803137999">worth</a> $173.4 billion as of market close on Tuesday, February 16, according to Forbes. Most of his fortune lies in his stake in electric car company Tesla, shares of which have more than quadrupled in value over the past 12 months. Musk also serves as CEO of Tesla.



SpaceX was last valued at $46 billion in an August 2020 fundraising round. But some Wall Street banks had put that value even higher: In October, a Morgan Stanley analyst gave SpaceX a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2020/10/23/elon-musks-spacex-gets-bullish-100-billion-valuation-from-morgan-stanley-double-what-investors-said-it-was-worth-in-august/?sh=75aaf6b86e79">bullish valuation of $100 billion</a>—double what investors said it was worth in August.&nbsp;



The latest fundraising round comes in the midst of two capital-intensive projects, Starship and Starlink. Starship is the company’s long-term spacecraft project, intended to eventually replace SpaceX’s existing Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft. The aim of the project is to develop a fully-reusable launch vehicle that is expected to take cargo, and eventually passengers, into space at a lower cost than other existing spacecraft.&nbsp;



Beyond&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2020/05/25/elon-musks-first-astronaut-launch-is-one-giant-leap-for-space-capitalism/#3df32c382b49">successfully launching</a>&nbsp;U.S. astronauts into space in May of last year, SpaceX said in 2020 that it was seeing “extraordinary demand” for its Starlink satellite broadband service. The project aims to build an interconnected network of about 12,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit. So far, early tests have shown broadbands speeds capable of playing online video games and streaming movies, but the service faces criticism over its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wtva.com/content/news/State-leader-questions-high-cost-for-Starlink-internet-service-573706251.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cost</a>&nbsp;and the company’s ability to&nbsp;<a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fight-against-spacex-tell-fcc-that-starlink-will-be-too-slow/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">scale capacity</a>.



In addition to raising money for its large-scale projects, SpaceX also completed a secondary transaction in which SpaceX insiders and investors were able to sell an additional $750 million worth of their shares, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/16/elon-musks-spacex-raised-850-million-at-419point99-a-share.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a> CNBC.



By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Now Worth $74 Billion After Latest Fundraising Round: Report

South African- born, billionaire technology and space entrepreneur, Elon Musk, made history at the start of 2021, overtaking Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the richest man on Earth. While his fortune was made on this planet, his dreams to venture to the final frontier remain. FORBES AFRICA takes a look at his journey to becoming one of the world’s most celebrated innovators and one of the wealthiest men alive.



THE MAN WHO FAMOUSLY SAID THAT HE WOULDN’T BE HAPPY UNTIL WE WERE ALL LIVING ON MARS, IS NOW ONE OF THE RICHEST MEN ON EARTH. WHILE ELON MUSK’S PLANS TO BE BURIED IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY REMAIN UNCHANGED, HE’S STILL GOT MUCH TO CELEBRATE IN THE HERE AND NOW.



On January 8 this year, at approximately 11.30AM on the American East Coast, Musk, known for founding some of the world’s most progressive tech companies, along with his unrelenting space-age ambitions, made yet another historical leap.



His net worth soared by $12.5 billion, to $189.7 billion, making him, for a time, the wealthiest person on the planet, according to Forbes, who broke the news. For the first time, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, who had held the top spot for a record four years, came second with a cumulative net worth of $185 billion.



However, in a twist of fate, stock in his electric car company, Tesla, fell by 8%, denting his personal wealth by a hefty $14 billion, overnight. But like the man himself, Musk’s wealth wouldn’t be down for long.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-819x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49882" width="376" height="470" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-819x1024.jpg 819w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-240x300.jpg 240w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-300x375.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-600x750.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 376px) 100vw, 376px" /><figcaption>UNIVERSAL CITY, CALIFORNIA &#8211; FEBRUARY 26: Model Maye Musk (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Elon’s aim is to save the planet and he also loves the thought of going to Mars&#8230;. I get very excited every step of the way. We all do. Kimbal and Tosca [Elon’s siblings] and I go to the main [SpaceX] launches, we can’t go to all the launches, as he has launched, how many now&#8230; 50 rockets? I’m not sure. I lose track. But we go to the main ones, and we are anxious beforehand and excited afterward and we are very proud of him and support him with all this. He just feels that we should be inter-planetary, starting with Mars. Mars seems to be the most friendly [planet], and that is what he would like to explore. <cite>-Elon Musk’s mother Maye Musk, in an interview from Los Angeles with FORBES AFRICA last year about her memoir, A Woman Makes A Plan, released by Jonathan Ball Publishers</cite></blockquote>



Days later, with the swift rebound of Tesla shares by 4.7%, he wrestled the top spot from Bezos with an impressive recovery of $7.8 billion bringing his total net worth to $183.8 billion against the Amazon founder’s, marginal, but impressive, $182.4 billion.



At the time of going to press, the yo-yo action continued. Tesla’s stock volatility returned Bezos to the top spot, making him the world’s richest by just $200 million, with Musk making a close second. The game is set to continue for much of the year, but it won’t do much to change the fact that both billionaires are still over $30 billion richer than their nearest competitor; the third person on the list, French luxury tycoon, Bernard Arnault, according to Forbes estimates.



Musk’s dizzying ascent is quite an achievement given that, in 2014, he ranked 47th on the U.S. Rich List, compiled by Forbes, with his personal net worth hovering at the $9.4 billion mark, at contemporary rates.



Notwithstanding his meteoric rise, most studies of Musk begin at SpaceX, his landmark aerospace manufacturing outfit, launched in 2002 with plans to make space travel more affordable and meet its founder’s often parodied mandate to catalyze humanity’s colonization of Mars.



“I’d like to go to Mars. I suppose it depends on how old I am when I get there&#8230; But it’s not about me going to Mars. We’re developing new technologies to enable a large number of people to go to Mars and be able to develop a self-sustaining city on Mars,” he told Forbes in 2014.



Inter-planetary ambitions aside, Musk’s ideas often overshadow the story of his origins which are rooted in a very down-to-earth Pretoria suburb, a few miles north of Johannesburg, in South Africa. Born in 1971 to a Canadian mother and a South African father, it was clear that Musk was unique from the start.



“The kind of things he would come up with as a youngster was always surprising. When he was very small, he would ask me, ‘where is the whole world?’, when he was three or four. It was these sorts of questions that made me realize that he was a little different,” his father, Errol Musk, noted in a 2012 interview with FORBES AFRICA.



Eccentricities aside, the young Musk was equally academically gifted.



“We called Elon ‘The Encyclopedia’ because he had read the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Collier’s Encyclopedia, and remembered everything. That’s also why we called him ‘Genius Boy’. We could ask him anything. Remember, this was before the internet. I guess now we would call him ‘The Internet’,” his mother, Maye Musk, recalls in her 2019 autobiography, A Woman Makes a Plan.



Attending Pretoria Boys High School (PBHS), often considered one of the most prestigious schools in South Africa, a teenage Musk kept to himself but found plenty of company in computers. He taught himself how to program using an old manual and eventually sold a space-themed video game that he wrote called Blastar, to a computing magazine in 1984, reportedly for $500, arguably the earliest of his tech ventures.



“My impression is that Elon kept to himself and was relatively quiet and reserved. I believe he was involved with the computer club at school, but otherwise was not really visible in mainstream activities,” Gavin Ehlers, head-boy at PBHS in 1988, the same year Musk graduated, told FORBES AFRICA in 2012.



Yet, despite his remarkable talent and comfortable upbringing, Musk’s childhood was blighted with peculiar challenges. As the shortest, smallest, and smartest kid in the class, he was an easy target for bullies, who tormented him until he was 15 years old.



“I was a late bloomer. So I was the youngest and the smallest kid in class for years and years&#8230; The gangs at school would hunt me down – literally hunt me down,” Musk told Rolling Stone magazine in 2017.



At home, things weren’t easier. His parents divorced in 1980.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">If somebody else is working 50 hours and you’re working a 100, you’ll get twice as much done in the course of the year as the other company.</blockquote>



The tumult of his early life did much to shape the man that Musk would later become. Even as a youngster, he held strong to his principles. At the time, in apartheid South Africa, mandatory two-year military service was in force for all white males who had completed their secondary school or tertiary- level education. In his objection, Musk said he didn’t prescribe to what the state was doing to its citizens.



“I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time,” he explained in the 2007 book, Rocketeers, by Michael Belfiore.



At 17, Musk relocated to Canada to attend university in 1989. After a number of transfers, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, part of the prominent Ivy League in the United States, with a dual degree in Economics and Physics, setting him firmly on the path of a tech entrepreneur. Like all the greats, he dropped out of his Ph.D. program at Stanford, instead of establishing his first startup, against the euphoria of the dot-com boom of the nineties. He founded the company, Zip2, with his younger brother, Kimbal – who has been a keen business partner to Musk throughout his entrepreneurial career – in 1995.



“When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment we rented a small office and slept on the couch. We were so hard-up we had just one computer so the website was up during the day and I was coding at night. Seven days a week&#8230; all the time. I briefly had a girlfriend during that period and in order to be with me she had to sleep at the office,” he said with a smile, during a 2014 Commencement Speech at the University of Southern California (USC).



Hard work is a cornerstone of Musk’s entrepreneurial ethos. His constant refrain to anyone who inquires on his success is to outwork the competition, where possible, to get that all important edge.



“If somebody else is working 50 hours and you’re working a 100, you’ll get twice as much done in the course of the year as the other company,” he told the audience at USC.



Clearly, the hard work has paid off for Musk who joined the five-man centi-billionaires club; all with a net worth over $100 billion, in August 2020.



Members include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and veteran tech titan, Bill Gates.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;Given that as a South African, he has managed to conquer the industry he’s in should be an inspiration to us and to Africa, in general. There are many sides to him&#8230; But let us draw inspiration from him because he is a product of the public school system in South Africa.&#8221; &#8211;Fred Khumalo, author and journalist, South Africa</blockquote>



However, it hasn’t been an easy ride to the top. In 2018, Tesla was in dire straits, the company was struggling to build a viable product and was hemorrhaging cash almost daily. Musk had already sunk a bulk of his early fortune in the business, some of which came from the $165 million sale of his stake in PayPal, the online payments pioneer, after his exit as CEO.



Leading the company during that time took a toll. In a very personal interview with The New York Times, Musk revealed that he was losing sleep and had spent most of his birthday working on the factory floor, where he was also spending most of his days and nights. The work had taken over to the point of almost missing Kimbal’s wedding, where he was the best man. A disheveled Musk admitted that while he regretted the havoc it wreaked on his life, he had no regrets about being so determined to pull Tesla from the brink of collapse.



“The worst is over from a Tesla operational standpoint. But from a personal pain standpoint&#8230; the worst is yet to come,” he told The New York Times.



Musk’s passion is evident in almost everything he has done, and in every business he has built. After leaving PayPal, and selling his stake in the company, he used a bulk of the $165 million fortune to found the companies that would make his name – SpaceX and Tesla. Any seasoned entrepreneur would have considered the move a risky one but Musk was quite adamant about his ambitions and making them a reality.



“I think there was like literally one week where I actually worked 120 hours and just didn’t leave the factory. I didn’t even go outside,” Musk told American television news magazine program, 60 Minutes, in 2018.



His intense work ethic has not only worked to transform Tesla but has inspired a number of other young entrepreneurs to build the electric car industry and get rich in the process.



For example, William Li, who founded electric car maker, Nio, in 2014, was 12 times richer in 2020 thanks to his shares in the U.S.-listed carmaker. In fact, he’s now among the world’s 500 richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Chinese entrepreneur, He Xiaopeng, chairman of XPeng Motors, has also seen his wealth jump more than 600%. Overall, fortunes of the handful of people tracked by the Bloomberg index in the electric vehicle industry have gone up by over $140 billion including Musk’s $111 billion surge.



However, far removed from his status on the global billionaire league tables, which have come to form the foundation of his popularity, Musk maintains his very own niche but loyal following, all devoted to his Twitter feed; his preferred mode of communication. Muskians, as they are known, see him as an eclectic superhero figure of the modern age where he is at once a conscientious technology entrepreneur and demi-god.



However, in 2020, following statements made on the impact the Trump administration’s Covid-19 policy responses had on his business, Musk received heavy back- lash from the mainstream and even managed to alienate some of his loyal fans. But all is forgotten now that the South African-born entrepreneur is among the world’s richest men.



While his wealth may be a relentless conversation starter, globally, it’s hard to ignore Musk’s legacy in the business arena. The journey from a quiet, intelligent and passionate young entrepreneur to an influential manufacturing magnate has been driven not just by a belief in hard work but by an ability to settle for dreams beyond the stars.



For generations to come, his place in time will always be confirmed by his commitment to not only conjure up ‘moonshot’ ideas but to actively pursue them; to Mars and back.



&#8211;BY MARIE SHABAYA



Get Your Copy Of FORBES AFRICA <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/product/single-digital-issue-the-billionaires-list-feb-march-2021/">here</a>



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GettyImages-1229901921

Rockets To Riches: The Rise And Rise Of Elon Musk

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is the richest person in the world once again, overtaking Jeff Bezos as shares of Amazon fell on Thursday.



Amazon’s stock fell 1.2%, lowering Bezos’ net worth by $2 billion, to $182.8 billion. Shares of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, on the other hand, lost 1.1% on Thursday, pushing Musk’s net worth down by $1.8 billion.&nbsp;



Musk is now worth $182.9 billion, which again makes him the wealthiest person on the planet, according to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;estimates. The Tesla chief is now just less than $1 billion richer than Bezos, who falls to second-richest person in the world.



The two billionaires have spent much of the last week competing for the title of wealthiest person on the planet. Musk took the number one spot from Bezos&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2021/01/08/elon-musk-is-now-the-richest-person-in-the-world-officially-surpassing-jeff-bezos/">last Friday</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2021/01/12/elon-musk-is-back-at-no-1-richest-person-in-the-world-after-tesla-stock-rebounds/?sh=4352d8de6c68">again on Tuesday</a>,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;calculates.&nbsp;



Both billionaires are over $30 billion richer than the world’s third-wealthiest person, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, who is worth $149.4 billion,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates.



Musk’s net worth has grown at an astonishing rate over the last year, rising more than $150 billion since March 2020, when he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/">worth $24.6 billion</a>. Bezos’ fortune has also continued to grow, though not as fast: He’s up from $113 billion in March 2020.

Elon Musk Is The Richest Person In The World—Again

Despite seeing his net worth skyrocket in recent months—and a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-06/musk-close-to-surpassing-bezos-as-world-s-richest-person#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%2C%20the%20outspoken%20entrepreneur,the%20world's%20500%20wealthiest%20people." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;from Bloomberg on Wednesday that he’s now the world’s richest person—<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/">Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;remains the second-richest person in the world, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ estimates.



Shares of Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TSLA</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla">+6.9%</a>&nbsp;rose by 7% as of 2:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, pushing Musk’s net worth up by $9.8 billion, to $175.2 billion. That makes him $22 billion richer than the planet’s third-wealthiest person, French luxury tycoon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=rtb/">Bernard Arnault</a>, but still $11 billion behind the world’s number one, Amazon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AMZN</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon">+1.8%</a>&nbsp;CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=rtb/">Jeff Bezos</a>.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that Bezos has a net worth of $186.8 billion.



Musk’s net worth has grown at an astronomical clip over the past year. He has added nearly $150 billion to his fortune since March 2020, when he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/">worth $24.6 billion</a>. Much of that increase comes from Tesla’s skyrocketing share price, which rose more than 720% in 2020. It has gained another 10% so far over the first week of 2021.&nbsp;



As Tesla’s stock soared ahead of its inclusion in the S&amp;P 500 Index on December 21, Musk surpassed Facebook&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FB</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook">+1.9%</a>&nbsp;CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?list=rtb/">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;(who is worth $98.2 billion today) to become the world’s fourth-richest person in early November, then leapfrogged Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MSFT</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft">+3%</a>&nbsp;cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=rtb/">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;(worth $121.9 billion today) for the number three spot.



Musk owns around 21% of Tesla’s shares, plus a stake in private rocket company SpaceX. Tesla stock still sits at record highs, now trading for over $800 per share. The company’s $765 billion market cap makes it by far the most valuable car company in the world.



-By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff

No, Elon Musk Is Not The Richest Person In The World—Yet

Topline In an effort to beef up the firm&#8217;s balance sheet and capitalize on massive stock gains this year, electric-carmaker Tesla said on Tuesday it will raise up to $5 billion in a new stock offering, the second time since September that the firm&#8217;s raised cash by issuing new shares.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



In a Tuesday regulatory&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312520312194/d60067d8k.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a>, Tesla said it could issue up to 7.8 million new shares based on Monday&#8217;s closing stock price, increasing the number of shares outstanding to roughly 955.6 million.



The firm said it plans to use offering proceeds to &#8220;further strengthen&#8221; its balance sheet by investing in high-grade bonds, cash equivalents or U.S. government securities.



Tesla shares are down 1% on Tuesday following the announcement, but still up an eye-popping 660% this year alone; meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq has climbed 37%.



The firm previously <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312520236699/d931870d424b5.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> another $5 billion capital raise on September 1 after year-to-date stock gains of roughly 450%.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE&nbsp;</h4>



&#8220;Now in a clear position of strength and out of the red ink with major factory build-outs on the horizon (in Austin and Berlin), Tesla is raising enough capital to get the balance sheet and capital structure to further firm up its growing cash position and slowly get out of its debt situation,&#8221; Wedbush analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe wrote on Tuesday.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Founded in 2003, Tesla went public on the Nasdaq exchange in June 2010 at an offering price of $17 per share. Shares have rallied this year amid a broader market boom for high-flying tech stocks, and much of the surge has happened in just the past month after S&amp;P Global announced in mid-November that it will&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/17/elon-musk-fortune-surges-5-billion-tesla-joining-sp-500/">add Tesla to the S&amp;P 500</a>&nbsp;Index on December 21, a move that should drive up demand for Tesla shares given the number of index and mutual funds tracking the S&amp;P.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h4>



$600 billion. That&#8217;s how much Tesla topped in market value on Monday, making it nearly three times more valuable than the world&#8217;s second-most valuable automaker, Toyota. This year&#8217;s stock surge has boosted Musk&#8217;s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">net worth</a> to roughly $141 billion, Forbes estimates. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT WE DON&#8217;T KNOW</h2>



S&amp;P Global hasn&#8217;t yet announced which firm Tesla will replace on the S&amp;P 500.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/17/elon-musk-fortune-surges-5-billion-tesla-joining-sp-500/">Elon Musk’s Fortune Surges $6 Billion After S&amp;P 500 Makes Tesla Its Largest-Ever Addition</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/"></a>Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk Reveals Tesla Model Y Crossover; To Start At $39,000

Tesla Is Raising Another $5 Billion To Capitalize On Stock’s Near-700% Surge This Year

Thanks to Tesla’s roaring stock,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=676b23917999">Elon Musk’s</a>&nbsp;net worth has nearly quadrupled during the Covid-19 pandemic, racing from $24.6 billion in mid-March to a current $126.8 billion by&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;estimate. But despite this meteoric rise, the 49-year-old is not the world’s second-richest person&nbsp;yet.&nbsp;



Forbes currently has Musk in the No. 3 spot, behind Jeff Bezos, who reigns supreme at $182.6 billion, and French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, worth $140.6 billion. With the surge in the value of Tesla shares this week, Musk surpassed Bill Gates, who is now in fourth place, worth $119.4 billion



Musk owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for personal loans;&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;applies a 25% discount to his shareholding to account for the loans. Musk’s&nbsp;net worth estimate includes $25 billion worth of options that he was awarded&nbsp;since May as part of&nbsp; a historic 12-tranche compensation plan.&nbsp;



Musk became eligible for the fourth tranche in late October after Tesla exceeded the cumulative EBITDA requirement, but Tesla has yet to confirm in public filings that it has certified the results. A representative for Musk did not reply to a request for comment from&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in time for publication. Until the receipt of the fourth tranche is confirmed,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;is only counting some 25 million options from the package towards Musk’s net worth.



Musk also owns an estimated 48% of SpaceX, the rocket company that recently made its first launch with astronauts on board. Investors valued SpaceX at $46 billion in August. After applying&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;10% private company discount, Musk’s SpaceX stake is worth just under $20 billion.



Tesla’s shares have risen 36% since Tuesday November 17 when S&amp;P Global announced that the electric car company would be added to the S&amp;P 500 index on December 21. The addition to the index means that more mutual funds tied to the S&amp;P 500 will buy Tesla stock.&nbsp;



With a current market capitalization of $525 billion, Tesla is worth far more than Toyota ($198 billion) and GM ($66 billion) combined. In the first three quarters of 2020, Tesla delivered 318,000 cars, a small fraction of the number produced by the world’s larger automakers.



“I really couldn’t care less,” Musk emailed Forbes about his net worth in July. “These numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.”



-By Hayley C. Cuccinello, Forbes Staff

Key Speakers At The Satellite 2020 Conference

No, Elon Musk Is Not The Second Richest Person In The World — Here’s Why

After more than a decade of annual losses, Tesla&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TSLA</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla">+0.2%</a>&nbsp;extended its profitability streak to five consecutive quarters, a company first, as increased sales of Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles and pollution credits boosted net income to $331 million, its highest to date.



The Palo Alto, California-based company led by billionaire entrepreneur&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://ir.tesla.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;earnings per share of 27 cents in the quarter, up from 16 cents a year ago. Revenue jumped 39% to $8.77 billion from $6.3 billion in 2019’s third quarter. As usual, sales of emissions credits to other automakers fattened the quarterly profits. Tesla reported $397 million of credit sales, essentially free money that goes a long way toward keeping the company in the black.&nbsp;



The upbeat results come after Tesla said this month that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/10/02/teslas-electric-car-shipments-jump-44-as-production-rebounds-from-coronavirus-slump/">deliveries of its electric cars and crossovers jumped 44%</a> in the quarter to the highest in company history, aided by the new Shanghai plant. Even as the company works to ramp up that $2 billion facility, it’s also begun construction of a $4 billion Gigafactory in Berlin and a new U.S. Gigafactory that will be built near Austin, Texas, at a cost of about $1 billion. Even with added capacity in China, it’s unclear whether Tesla will hit Musk’s goal of selling 500,000 vehicles this year. 



“We have the capacity installed to produce and deliver 500,000 vehicles this year,” Tesla said in a letter to investors. “While achieving this goal has become more difficult, delivering half a million vehicles in 2020 remains our target. Achieving this target depends primarily on quarter over quarter increases in Model Y and Shanghai production, as well as further improvements in logistics and delivery efficiency at higher volume levels.”



The results were generally higher than analysts anticipated. Tesla shares rose about 3.3% in after-hours Nasdaq <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nasdaq" target="_blank">NDAQ</a> <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nasdaq">+2.6%</a> trading to $436.75. The stock was little changed at the close, ahead of earnings, at $422.64. 



ird Bridge Group in New York. “Not super surprising&nbsp;given how much they beat on deliveries, which was revealed earlier this month.”



Tesla’s operating margin of 9.2% was slightly below expectations, likely reflecting a vehicle mix that has skewed toward the Model 3 and Model Y, the company’s lowest margin vehicles, and away from the pricier Model S and Model X, Shields said.



Sales of pollution credits, including California zero-emission vehicle and U.S. CAFE credits, have become a lucrative source of revenue for Tesla as they are generated for each electric vehicle it sells. The $397 million received in the third quarter brings its year-to-date credit sales total to $1.18 billion, double 2019’s full year total.



“The regulatory credits business was stronger than our expectations,” Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn said in a conference all. “We are tracking to more than double this year compared to last.”



Fourth-quarter deliveries will be critical to watch “given that they have softened their language around the previously stated goal of 500 K for the year,” he said. To reach that target, Tesla will have to get just over 180,000 vehicles to customers in the final quarter of 2020.



The company had about $14.5 billion of cash at of the end of the quarter and said it “should have sufficient liquidity to fund our product roadmap, long-term capacity expansion plans and other expenses.”



“We are currently building Model Y capacity at Gigafactory Shanghai, Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas, and remain on track to start deliveries from each location in 2021,” the company said. “Tesla Semi deliveries will also begin in 2021. We continue to significantly invest in our product roadmap.”



Despite the pandemic, Musk’s wealth has surged this year because of his nearly 25% ownership stake in Tesla. Forbes estimates his net worth at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">$88.7 billion</a> as of Oct. 21.



-By Alan Ohnsman, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk visits construction site of the Tesla Giga Factory

Tesla Stays In The Black For A Fifth Quarter, Buoyed By Emissions Credit Sales

Over the last few years, David Dobrik has given away more than a dozen cars to family and friends, filming the spectacles for his channel on YouTube, where the comedian is one of the site’s biggest stars. The first time was back in September 2016, when&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVXbKqzKZFw" target="_blank">he gave</a>&nbsp;then-girlfriend and fellow YouTube star Liza Koshy a white Tesla. He’s since doled out&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok5aimwxavI" target="_blank">a Mercedes to his mom</a>,&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFEJaAZU3nw" target="_blank">a BMW to his dad</a>, a Lamborghini to one&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FWdlYB7H0o" target="_blank">very, very lucky friend</a>&nbsp;and, most recently, a baby blue Ford Bronco&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMbRu3YkmJo" target="_blank">to his assistant</a>. Dobrik relishes capturing the recipients’ surprise on camera—the gifts’ outsize nature creating an overtop moment that he considers internet gold. Some people have cried. Others have screamed. The videos are among his most popular on YouTube, where he has 18.8 million subscribers and where such videos typically get around 12 million views. Just as David Letterman had his&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-P-bEHKVIE" target="_blank">Stupid Pet Tricks</a>&nbsp;and Jay Leno his&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqmQJXdqrM" target="_blank">man-on-the-street quizzes</a>, the car giveaways have become a piece of signature Dobrik schtick.



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://twitter.com/DavidDobrik/status/1311044061969571840?s=20
</div></figure>



In August, a fan of Dobrik’s made&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@fallafalous/video/6856856616155811078" target="_blank">a TikTok video</a>&nbsp;that urged Dobrik to do another giveaway while asking entrants to register to vote. At first, Dobrik didn’t want to. To him, the joke—the grand reveal, the wild looks of surprise—had started to run out of gas. “It’s gotten old,” he says. But he knew how much people loved this routine and figured there’d probably be no better way to drive his Gen Z-dominated audience to register to vote. So last Tuesday he posted&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CFu4_mKMYYm/" target="_blank">an Instagram picture</a>&nbsp;of himself surrounded by five white Tesla Model 3s. To have a chance to win one of the Musk-mobiles, you had to share his post on your account, tag a friend in a comment and see whether you’re registered through&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.headcount.org/" target="_blank">HeadCount.org</a>, a non-partisan group devoted to increasing voting rolls. 



“I can’t vote. I’m not a citizen. I think that’s why I wanted to do this,” says Dobrik, 24, a Slovakian immigrant who is one of the so-called Dreamers, recipients of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA, as the legislation is known, allows people brought to America as children to live and work here. “I wanted to go, like, ‘Hey, guys! I can’t vote. I’d love to, but the best I can do is you guys go vote on my behalf.’ ”



By directing his fans to a voter-registration portal run by HeadCount.org, the New York-based organization was able to count up how many people registered from Dobrik’s Instagram post: nearly 120,000. It’s the single largest voting drive in the 16-year history of HeadCount, which has worked with many celebrities, mostly musicians. Other recent HeadCount partners included Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.



It’s common enough for all types of stars to lend their voices to political causes and to encourage people to vote, and much of this work is now carried out digitally. HeadCount is one of the most active in the space, and in founder Andy Bernstein’s experience, the highest-profile celebs tend to bring in perhaps a few thousand newly registered voters. The 120,000 from Dobrik’s push? “Absolutely unprecedented. Never seen anything like it,” Bernstein says. “We’ve registered close to 1 million voters over our lifetime, and more than a tenth of that has now come from David.”



Experts who study voting registration and elections pointed to two other prominent registration pushes in 2020 from outside the major political parties: the 1 million-plus voters Snapchat says&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/10/01/more-than-1-million-people-have-registered-to-vote-through-snapchat-65-of-them-under-24/">it has gotten to register</a>&nbsp;and the 2.5 million that Facebook has persuaded to do the same thing. Dobrik’s Tesla campaign then is likely the single biggest voter registration success by an individual this year and one of the largest by an individual in modern American politics—a profound testament to the draw of Dobrik’s brand of youthful goofiness.



“Using a social media star to push people to a digital registration site has that kind of smoothness that really facilitates immediate action,” says Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin professor who has long researched voter registration and elections. He does, reasonably, caution that voter registration does not at all translate to 100% participation in the next election. Nonetheless, Burden says, such a voter registration drive would’ve been “much harder in an analog setup where someone was communicating in a TV ad, and they wanted you to go get a form and mail it in.”



Kudos then to Dobrik, one of the funniest fellows on the internet today. He’s been digitally famous for a while now—and seems increasingly close to achieving the type of fame normally reserved for the men behind desks on late night TV. “If you ask somebody in their 40s who David Dobrik is, they know who David is—if they have kids and teenagers,” says Bernstein. “If they don’t have kids, they probably don’t.”



Dobrik came to America as a kid, arriving at age 6 from Košice, Slovakia and grew up in Chicago. While in high school, his first triumphs on the internet came through Vine, the briefly luminous social media app built on six-second clips. The zaniness of Vine informed the antics he began taping for YouTube in 2015. In the preceding years, he has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bav1DzAnitc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">loaded a Slip ‘N Slide</a>&nbsp;into the back of a moving truck;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SLeGyT0Smo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filled someone’s mouth</a>&nbsp;with Mentos and Coca-Cola; built a slide and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIYzdIphPzM" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ridden a kayak</a>&nbsp;down it with his dad; and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPJKbXuP-_A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">taught a friend’s mom</a>&nbsp;the lyrics to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zencBD3z68" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“I Love It”</a>&nbsp;by Lil Pump and Kanye West (“I’m a sick f—k, I like a quick f—k”). Along the way, he has palled around on camera with such other celebrities as singer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRPNw6_SfTA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Charlie Puth,</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VF0GEf3S0I" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Justin Bieber</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_OBMAY18s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Steve-O</a>, the star of&nbsp;Jackass,&nbsp;a TV show that has clearly informed some of Dobrik’s sensibilities. Each video runs exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds, a nod to April 20, a holiday to marijuana enthusiasts as Oktoberfest is to beer drinkers.



Dobrik’s stuff is good natured enough to be brand friendly, and he has earned sponsorship dollars from Warner Bros, Bumble, Electronic Arts and SeatGeek. Earlier this year, he stopped posting on YouTube and pivoted entirely to TikTok, where he has attracted 23 million followers. Dobrik’s delight in collaborations has worked well there too, where he has struck up a tight friendship with Addison Rae Easterling, one of TikTok’s biggest stars and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/08/06/tiktoks-highest-earning-stars-teen-queens-addison-rae-and-charli-damelio-rule/">its top earner</a>. In January, he appeared on&nbsp;The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.&nbsp;Dobrik now has his own cosmetics line, the simply named David’s Perfume, and he is also the founder of a camera app called Dispo that has newly raised $4 million from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and other investors. As its name suggests,&nbsp;<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dispo-single-use-camera/id1124432145" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dispo</a>&nbsp;mimics old fashioned disposable cameras—taking digital images that a user does not see until the next day.



In his voting initiative, Dobrik stopped short of directly advocating who his audience should vote for. “My least favorite thing is when the comments section on my videos—which is supposed to be a fun place—get political, and a bunch of people are yelling at other,” he says. “I try to keep out of it.” Left unsaid are the implications around DACA, the immigration law allowing Dobrik to hang out a shingle in entertainment. The legislation is a Obama hallmark, a piece of legislation trumpeted by Democrats and one that President Trump has tried hard to end. Meanwhile, his dad, who’s ineligible for DACA, is in the middle of deportation hearings, Dobrik says.



As for the winners of the Teslas, they’ve already been selected, and on Monday afternoon, Dobrik was preparing to FaceTime them, though none would know it was him calling rather than some member of his team. As in the past, he was very much looking forward to the astonished looks on their faces but was unsure whether he’d publish any of these videos online. “Sometimes,” he says, “I just do it for my own enjoyment.’



-By Abram Brown, Forbes Staff

Comedy Central Roast Of Alec Baldwin – Arrivals

David Dobrik’s Tesla Giveaway Was Probably One Of The Largest U.S. Voter Registration Drives—Ever

The newest superstar investor has leveraged a zealous belief in innovation into a $29 billion-in-assets firm and a $250 million net worth. Among her predictions: Elon Musk&#8217;s car company is vastly undervalued.



Tesla shares were limping along around $200 in May 2019, about where they had traded five years earlier, when Elon Musk’s biggest Wall Street booster tried a gutsy experiment. Cathie Wood and her Ark Investment Management were already well-known for their way-out-there predictions that Tesla would build a fleet of robo-taxis worth $1 trillion and that its shares would soar 20- or 30-fold by 2023. Now she stirred the pot again by publishing online Ark’s new bull’s-case valuation of $1.4 trillion, implying a share price above $6,000, complete with every Excel calculation and assumption behind those estimates. 



Criticism came fast and furious. Tesla short seller Jim Chanos, famed for uncovering Enron’s fraud, took Wood to task over Ark’s forecasts of Tesla’s gross margins. “[W]hat Ark has produced is a forward pricing for Tesla, not a valuation,’’ sniffed valuation expert Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University. The model, he noted, didn’t include a discounted cash-flow analysis and carried incomplete forecasts on the costs Tesla would incur to scale its vehicle production. That $1 trillion value Ark was placing on Tesla’s nonexistent robo-taxi fleet? “Strikes me as more fairy tale than valuation,’’ Damodaran opined.&nbsp;



Sixteen months later, Tesla shares—after a five-for-one August stock split—were trading at $400. In other words, they’d risen tenfold, driven up by speculation and excitement over Musk’s autonomous-driving and battery technologies and Tesla’s stronger-than-expected financial performance. Musk’s car company is now worth five times more than Ford and General Motors combined, and Wood has made a fortune. The nitpicking skeptics, she believes, have missed the big picture: As electric cars go increasingly mainstream, production efficiencies and advances in batteries and other technologies will cut what it costs to make them. And as sticker prices fall, demand will surge, including from businesses like ride-sharing companies. In September, Musk promised a $25,000 car within three years.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, Wood, 64, is perfectly happy to have a chorus of critics: “It almost makes me feel comfortable, to be honest, because it means if we’re right, then the rewards will be pretty enormous.”&nbsp;



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Loaded on the Ark</h1>



Cathie Wood’s ETFs bet on big ideas and industry disruptors. Here are some of her top holdings.



<figure class="wp-block-table is-style-stripes"><table><tbody><tr><td>ETF</td><td>Stock</td><td>1-Year Gain</td><td>Bullish Case</td></tr><tr><td>ARKK (Innovation)</td><td>Invitae Corp.</td><td>109%</td><td>Genetic-testing innovators could cut health-care costs.</td></tr><tr><td>ARKW (Next-gen internet)</td><td>Roku</td><td>68%</td><td>Consumer operating system for streaming media. </td></tr><tr><td>ARKQ (Robotics) </td><td>Proto Labs </td><td>26%</td><td>3D printer lowering costs in industries like aerospace. </td></tr><tr><td>ARKG (Genomics)</td><td>CRISPR Therapeutics</td><td>81%</td><td>Gene editor developing treatments for cancer and diabetes. </td></tr><tr><td>ARKF(Fintech)</td><td>Square </td><td>185%</td><td>The payment processor is becoming a digital bank. </td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Wood’s comfort with going her own way has helped her turn Ark into one of the fastest-growing and top-performing investment firms in the world. Its flagship $8.6 billion Ark Innovation Fund is up a staggering 75% in 2020 and has returned an annual average of 36% over the past five years, nearly triple that of the S&amp;P 500.&nbsp;



While most star stock pickers treat their work like state secrets, Wood makes Ark’s research freely available online and posts real-time logs of her firm’s trades. Instead of hiring MBAs, she prefers to bring onboard young analysts with backgrounds in subjects like molecular biology or computer engineering, figuring they’re more likely to spot the next trend. Even the structure of Ark, an acronym for Active Research Knowledge, is original. Wood manages seven portfolios designed to capitalize on breakthroughs in robotics, energy storage, DNA sequencing and financial and blockchain technology, and makes them available to investors, particularly Millennials trading on Robinhood, as tax-efficient exchange-traded funds.&nbsp;



Its Tesla position and a pandemic that has accelerated adoption of the technologies embedded in the 35 to 55 companies in each Ark ETF have helped its assets nearly triple in 2020, to $29 billion. “Coronavirus has catapulted our innovative platforms into high gear because they solve problems,” Wood says. “Innovation solves problems.”&nbsp;



Forbes&nbsp;conservatively values Ark at $500 million, or about 2% of assets under management, roughly the same multiple as publicly traded T. Rowe Price commands. Wood’s 50%-plus ownership gives her a net worth of $250 million, good for the No. 80 spot on&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;sixth annual list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women.&nbsp;



It’s easy to dismiss Wood as the face of a stock-market bubble created by the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies. But she has survived her share of both bubbles and bear markets. While an economics student at the University of Southern California, she studied under supply-side guru Arthur Laffer and apprenticed from 1977 to 1980 at Los Angeles fund giant Capital Group, watching as interest rates approaching 20% crushed the economy and the market. After graduating in 1981, she joined Jennison Associates, now an equity investment arm of Prudential, as an economist in New York. There she made an early call that inflation and interest rates had peaked. That garnered eye rolls from her superiors, but Wood was right—and the experience inculcated in her an appreciation for the potentially big upside of going against consensus. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">As the pandemic took hold, Cathie Wood loaded up on tech stocks that she correctly predicted would lead the recovery—and bought herself a house in ritzy Hilton Head, South Carolina, from which to work.</blockquote>



Frustrated with her career path at Jennison and wanting to research individual companies, one Friday Wood up and quit. Her mentor at the firm persuaded her to return the following Monday and moved her into equity research. She covered nascent wireless telecom companies in the late 1980s and early ’90s, getting a ground-floor view of the huge economic and societal changes coming as cellphones grew ubiquitous. In 2001, she moved to New York–based AllianceBernstein as chief investment officer for thematic portfolios. But the 2008 financial crisis ushered in an era in which active managers underperformed the S&amp;P 500 and trillions flooded into low-cost index funds. Wood decided a fresh approach was needed. In 2012, she proposed putting actively managed portfolios of innovative companies inside an ETF structure. The idea got nowhere at AllianceBernstein.&nbsp;



Two years later, she launched Ark in New York. Success wasn’t immediate. In the firm’s first two years, its flagship fund placed in the bottom quartile of its peer group, according to Morningstar. By the end of 2016, Wood had attracted just $307 million in assets, and Ark’s 0.75% management fee wasn’t covering overhead. To keep going, she dug deep in her savings, sold minority stakes and struck partnerships with larger firms to build distribution. Japan’s Nikko Asset Management and the mutual fund firm American Beacon now own 39% of the company. Almost 10% is owned by the firm’s two dozen employees.



In 2017, Ark took off, buoyed by surging prices for stocks like Netflix, Salesforce, DNA sequencer Illumina, digital-payments processor Square and digital health provider Athenahealth. Assets rose tenfold, and Ark began to build its brand on the back of bold predictions, an active Twitter presence and the free research it put online. (It also attracted notice for a cryptocurrency fund available only to accredited investors; Wood started buying Bitcoin, which she calls an “insurance policy” against inflation, in 2015 at $250 a coin.) &nbsp;



Wood takes a top-down approach to building portfolios, first identifying disruptions by any means possible, including crowdsourcing—she even opens the firm’s Friday afternoon research meetings to outsiders, who can call in via Lifesize. Economics is central. Wood is most bullish on innovations if she believes their costs will decline over time, creating real demand. When scoring potential holdings, Ark looks at corporate culture and management execution on growth initiatives. Only at the end of the process does Wood value a company, refusing to buy anything she doesn’t expect will rise by 15% annually over five years, Ark’s minimum expected holding period. 



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The tumult of 2020 has been good for Ark. In March, when the pandemic emerged and stocks plunged, Wood correctly predicted fast-growing tech companies would lead the world (and financial markets) to recovery. She concentrated Ark portfolios in Tesla and other top picks including education-software company 2U and real estate platform Zillow. Then, in late summer, when Tesla soared, she trimmed her holdings and built a large position in the battered shares of Slack.



With all successful innovations, of course, come copycats. Gimmicky themed ETFs have proliferated in everything from pets to sports gambling to work-from-home. Fund giants Dimensional Fund Advisors, Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price have all recently launched their own slates of actively managed ETFs.&nbsp;



An optimist by nature, Wood nonetheless offers some unsettling predictions for the next five years. She expects a broad swath of large industries—banking, energy, transportation, health care—to be disrupted by technological change, with many workers displaced. The result, she believes, is that economic growth, inflation and broad market indexes will all fall persistently short of expectations, providing an opportunity for active managers to pick the innovative winners that will continue to drive market-cap gains.



“I think the benchmarks and the indexes are going to go through a terrible period. We’re already seeing it,” she says. “We believe they are being increasingly populated by value traps.”&nbsp;



Does she think the market is now in a bubble? Nope. Uncertainty over the pandemic and the election (Wood supports President Trump “unabashedly”) means money has been flowing out of stocks and into the safety of bonds, she notes. “The fact that people are fearful now that we’re back at the S&amp;P 500 trading at 25 times earnings tells me that we are not in a bubble at all.” 



-By Antoine Gara, Forbes Staff

Key Speakers At The Sooner Than You Think Technology Conference

How Cathie Wood Beat Wall Street By Betting Tesla Is Worth More Than $1 Trillion

Elon Musk on Monday hinted at his plans to take SpaceX’s space internet venture, Starlink, public in several years when revenue growth is “smooth and predictable” as the firm, which eventually aims to provide broadband around the world, is servicing towns in Washington ravaged by wildfires along the U.S. West Coast.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h4>



The Tesla CEO revealed his plans on Twitter, saying small retail investors will “get top priority” when the company is listed: “You can hold me to it.”



Investors may be waiting a while — Musk said he will only take the company public in several years when revenue growth is smooth and predictable, adding: “Public market does *not* like erratic cash flow.”.



Last year, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/15/musk-on-starlink-internet-satellites-spacex-has-sufficient-capital.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;he believed Starlink would be an important revenue stream for SpaceX, with ambitions to provide high-speed internet around the world.



It comes as the company is assisting the Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division as it responds to towns devastated by wildfires, providing internet access to emergency responders and the public.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



In February, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/spacex-likely-to-spin-off-starlink-business-and-pursue-an-ipo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told investors</a>&nbsp;of the company’s plans to spin out Starlink into a separate business and take the company public.&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Starlink is SpaceX’s ambitious internet-from-space project, involving a constellation of thousands of satellites that will deliver high speed internet access across the globe. SpaceX is optimistic about Starlink’s future. The company says it is already seeing an “extraordinary demand” from potential customers for its satellite broadband service, CNBC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/01/spacex-starlink-extraordinary-demand-with-nearly-700000-interested.html#:~:text=Investing%20in%20Space-,SpaceX%20says%20Starlink%20internet%20has%20'extraordinary%20demand%2C'%20with,nearly%20700%2C000%20interested%20in%20service&amp;text=SpaceX%20asked%20regulators%20if%20it,5%20million%20from%201%20million." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>, with nearly 700,000 individuals in the US alone. Starlink’s website says it is targeting the US and Canada in 2020 and rapidly expanding “to near global coverage” by 2021.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h4>



Elon Musk tweeted: “We will&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1310672832783884290?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">probably IPO Starlink</a>, but only several years in the future when revenue growth is smooth &amp; predictable. Public market does *not* like erratic cash flow haha. I’m a huge fan of small retail investors. Will make sure they get top priority. You can hold me to it.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT&nbsp;</h4>



Starlink’s enormous constellation of satellites have proven controversial since the first set was launched last year. Some complain they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/12/stars-astronomy-spacex-satellite-elon-musk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">obstruct the night sky</a>&nbsp;and the European Space Agency said it had to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/03/european-satellite-in-near-collision-with-elon-musk-spacex-craft" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">alter the trajectory&nbsp;</a>of one of its observation satellites to avoid a collision with a Starlink satellite.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h4>



The race for space has only just begun and Musk isn’t the only billionaire with his eyes set skyward. Jeff Bezos will be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2020/07/31/amazon-is-going-to-add-3000-more-satellites-into-earths-orbit--and-people-are-not-happy/#2581898d7628">overseeing</a>&nbsp;Amazon’s own constellation of internet-providing satellites, Project Kuiper, which received FCC approval this summer. Bezos’ Blue Origin is also involved in the space race, currently developing reusable launch vehicles.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/spacex-likely-to-spin-off-starlink-business-and-pursue-an-ipo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Musk’s SpaceX Plans a Spinoff, IPO for Starlink Business</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/18/billionaire-elon-musk-raises-19-billion-in-new-funding-for-spacex/#59a59c272404">Billionaire Elon Musk Raises $1.9 Billion In New Funding For SpaceX</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2020/02/06/an-ipo-of-spacexs-starlink-business-would-let-investors-bet-on-elon-musk-disrupting-another-industry/#5ee646097b78">An IPO of SpaceX’s Starlink Business Would Let Investors Bet On Elon Musk Disrupting Another Industry</a> (Forbes)



&#8211;-BY Robert Hart, Forbes Staff

gettyimages-1130598362-594×594

Billionaire Elon Musk Teases IPO For Starlink, SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Business

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;intends to expand Tesla’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TSLA</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla">-5.6%</a>&nbsp;lead in electric vehicles by shifting to a new, bigger type of lithium-ion cell that’s 56% cheaper and by massively increasing battery production to create a huge competitive advantage. But it’s going to take a few years to make them at high-volume and the manufacturing system needed to do that isn’t quite ready.&nbsp;



The billionaire entrepreneur, who has hyped the electric-car maker’s “Battery Day” for months, used the event staged in the parking lot of Tesla’s Palo Alto, California, headquarters to unveil the 4680 cell company engineers developed in-house. More than double the size of the current 2170-format cells Tesla uses, the new chemical devices provide five times the energy, 16% more range, and six-times the power, according to Musk and Drew Baglino, senior vice president for powertrain and energy engineering.



Limited production of the new cells has begun at a pilot battery factory in Silicon Valley, though it’s going to take time to ramp up to the terawatt-hour level of output Musk envisions. “It&#8217;s probably about a year before we get to the 10-gigawatt-hour annualized rate with the pilot plant, and this is just a pilot plant. The actual production plants will be more on the order of maybe 200-gigawatt hours, maybe more over time.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">It&#8217;s close to working, but it&#8217;s not even now at the pilot plant level.</blockquote>



But he then clarified that are still kinks in the new production system for the 4680 cells. “To be clear, I would like to not say that right now it’s just totally working. It&#8217;s close to working, but it&#8217;s not even now at the pilot plant level. It is close to working. All I can think it&#8217;s fair to say probably it does work, but with not a good … not a high yield.”



While Musk earlier this month had said the event would be “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1306504307148075008?s=20" target="_blank">very insane</a>,” he dialed that back on Sept. 21 by noting that Battery Day announcements affect “will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022.” And even as Tesla scales up production of its new cell, it will continue to buy 2170 cells from suppliers Panasonic, LG Chem and China’s CATL.



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">We intend to increase, not reduce battery cell purchases from Panasonic, LG &amp; CATL (possibly other partners too). However, even with our cell suppliers going at maximum speed, we still foresee significant shortages in 2022 &amp; beyond unless we also take action ourselves.&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1308149191684710400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



To accommodate production of its new battery, Tesla plans to build a factory to make cathode material, and it’s switching from the use of graphite in the anode to lower-cost silicon. The company has also acquired rights to source lithium it needs from 10,000 acres in Nevada, though Musk didn’t disclose the location of the property and what’s spending on that operation.&nbsp;



The battery news followed the company’s annual shareholder meeting, done drive-in movie style this year owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, with attendees watching the event from their Tesla vehicles in the company lot. Honks and beeps replaced the cheering for Musk typically heard at company events.&nbsp;



Of note during the annual meeting portion was the consideration of two items proposed by activist Tesla investors who want better disclosure of worker conditions and their treatment as well as a commitment to ensure that all raw materials needed for batteries and other components are sourced ethically. Tesla’s board recommended voting against both measures, and they appear likely to fail.&nbsp;



While the discussion of the new cell was highly detailed, the company’s multiyear timetable for introducing it as well as new advancements in its production system to allow for lower-cost manufacturing, appeared to disappoint investors. Tesla fell about 7% in after-hours Nasdaq&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nasdaq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NDAQ</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nasdaq">+1%</a>&nbsp;trading to $394.98, after finishing regular trading down 5.6%.



Battery Day, like most recent Tesla events, was attended mainly by fans of the company. During a concluding Q&amp;A session, there were no questions from either equity analysts or journalists.



By Alan Ohnsman, Forbes Staff

Tesla Has A Cheaper, Bigger Battery Cell–But Needs Time To Reach ‘Terawatt-Hour’ Production

Tesla shares spiked 11.2% on Monday, boosting Elon Musk’s net worth by $7 billion to $83.6 billion. The hefty stock gain makes the 49-year-old entrepreneur the fifth-richest person in the world, pushing Musk ahead of Indian oil and gas tycoon Mukesh Ambani and investing luminary Warren Buffett.



Not that he’s keeping track. The eccentric billionaire says he’s indifferent to his standing on our rich list. “I really couldn’t care less,” Musk emailed Forbes about his net worth in July. “These numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.”



Musk first rose to fifth place in late July, when his net worth topped $74 billion, but was soon surpassed by Ambani. Now Tesla shares are up nearly 32% in the past five days. With the stock on a tear, Musk’s fortune has more than tripled since mid-March, when he ranked 31st on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list. He owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes applies a discount to his shares because of the loans.



The stock jumped on Monday after an analyst upgraded his 12-month price target to $1,900; Tesla’s share price is currently $1,835.64. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives believes that Tesla, which opened a new factory in Shanghai in late 2019, is well-positioned to take advantage of increasing Chinese demand for electric vehicles. Ives also predicted that Musk will reveal “game-changing” news at the upcoming Battery Day on September 22.



Tesla is the most valuable automaker in the world, with a market capitalization of $342 billion despite producing substantially fewer vehicles than competitors such as Ford and Toyota. A five-for-one stock split will take effect after the market closes on August 28.



FURTHER READING



<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2020/08/12/i-am-just-getting-started-maye-musk-on-her-new-book-modeling-mars-and-her-genius-boy-elon/" target="_blank">‘I Am Just Getting Started’: Maye Musk On Her New Book, Modeling, Mars And Her ‘Genius Boy’ Elon</a> (Forbes Africa)



-Hayley C. Cuccinello, Forbes Staff

gettyimages-490597722-594×594

Elon Musk Now The World’s Fifth-Richest Person (Again), After $7 Billion Bump From Tesla Stock Surge

Elon Musk&#8217;s meteoric rise up the Forbes Billionaire List has continued this month, as he’s ascended past luminaries such as Warren Buffett and Steve Ballmer. As of Monday afternoon, Musk&#8217;s net worth surpassed <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#11a0831e3d78">$74 billion</a>, meaning he is now the fifth-richest person on the planet.



KEY FACTS



<ul><li>Musk, 49, is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, the electric vehicle company whose stock price has soared since March.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Tesla shares gained another 9.5% in Monday&#8217;s trading to $1,643.00, giving it a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/cramer-says-moves-in-tech-stocks-are-truly-insane-as-amazon-and-tesla-climb.html" target="_blank">60%</a> rise in just three weeks since June 29, and a nearly 300% increase in 2020 alone.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Tesla is now not only the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">world&#8217;s most valuable car company</a>, with a market cap of $304.5 billion, it’s worth more than Ford, Ferrari, General Motors and BMW <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">combined</a>.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Musk was ranked <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/"> No. 31</a> on Forbes&#8217; Billionaires List as recently as mid-March, with a net worth just under $25 billion.</li></ul>



<ul><li>His fortune has nearly tripled since then, skyrocketing to $74.2 billion at the close of trading Monday, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#11a0831e3d78">Forbes calculates.</a></li></ul>



<ul><li>Musk owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes has discounted his stake to take the loans into account.</li></ul>



KEY BACKGROUND: 



Musk first debuted on Forbes’ 400 Wealthiest Americans List in 2012 in 190th place with a net worth of $2.4 billion. On January 1 this year, he was the 37th richest person on earth. However, Tesla&#8217;s sudden and spectacular rise has propelled him near the very top of the world&#8217;s wealthiest humans. Tesla&#8217;s surge has confounded some investors, considering it’s far smaller than its competitors and only recently began to log quarterly profits. Tesla produced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">103,000 vehicles</a>&nbsp;in the first quarter; Toyota produced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">2.4 million vehicles</a>&nbsp;during that same period. In 2019, American automakers General Motors and Ford generated&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danrunkevicius/2020/07/20/tesla-stock-may-be-rallying-for-this-absurd-reasonand-this-wont-end-well/#794f313f67a6">ten times</a>&nbsp;more sales than Tesla. Late last month, analysts from Morgan Stanley warned that Tesla stock, which was trading at roughly $1,000 per share at that time, was &#8220;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/23/tesla-is-overvalued-investors-are-treating-it-too-much-like-a-tech-company-says-morgan-stanley/#15e075f96c74">grossly overvalued</a>&nbsp;and set to plunge.&#8221; Earlier this month, Musk said that Tesla would produce virtually fully autonomous&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/07/09/elon-musk-tesla-will-have-level-5-self-driving-cars-this-year/#1942918a2d1d">self-driving vehicles</a>&nbsp;by the end of 2020, a claim that was met with skepticism by an auto industry accustomed to a heaping of hype from Musk on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/tesla-autopilot-germany.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">capabilities of self-driving technology</a>. Musk has not sold shares of Tesla&nbsp;<a href="http://sites/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">since 2010</a>.



CRITICAL QUOTES:



&#8220;I really couldn&#8217;t care less,&#8221; Musk emailed Forbes about his net worth earlier this month. &#8220;These numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.&#8221;



&#8220;Moves like we are seeing in Microsoft and Tesla and Amazon are truly insane and unlike any i have ever seen in my life,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jimcramer/status/1285293615019888640?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;analyst Jim Cramer on Monday afternoon. When asked if Tesla was a &#8216;Covid Stock,&#8217; Cramer&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jimcramer/status/1285310934114861057?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">replied</a>, &#8220;i don&#8217;t even know if it is a stock. it is something else entirely, like a new species discovered in the wild.&#8221;&nbsp;



TANGENT:



When Kanye West<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/07/08/kanye-west-says-hes-done-with-trump-opens-up-about-white-house-bid-damaging-biden-and-everything-in-between/#4597b0a647aa"> initially announced</a> that he was running for president, he said he had the &#8220;full support&#8221; of Musk, a longtime close friend. In a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://pagesix.com/2020/07/11/elon-musk-backpedals-on-support-of-kanye-wests-presidential-bid/" target="_blank">since-deleted tweet</a>, Musk responded, &#8220;We may have more differences of opinion than I anticipated.&#8221; However, Musk later told <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://pagesix.com/2020/07/13/elon-musk-on-why-hes-still-backing-kanye-west-for-president/" target="_blank">Page Six</a>, &#8220;Kanye explained afterward some of the reasoning behind why he said what he said. It makes more sense than many people, including me, realized.&#8221; On July Fourth, Musk <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://pagesix.com/2020/07/13/elon-musk-on-why-hes-still-backing-kanye-west-for-president/" target="_blank">tweeted</a>, &#8220;You have my full support!&#8221;



&#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/">Tommy Beer</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

Elon Musk Is Now The Fifth Richest Person In The World

Once again the question of ‘what&#8217;s the limit?’ when it comes to Tesla’s valuation and ambitions remains unanswered. In the days since <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/" target="_self">Elon Musk</a> talked about the clean transportation and energy company’s future at its <a href="https://www.tesla.com/shareholdermeeting" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">annual shareholder meeting</a>, the stock rocketed nearly 5% to a new record.
Those exciting plans – an electric semi-truck; a new plant to make the Model Y crossover, built from a completely new platform; thousands more company-owned stores and service centers; a vastly larger Supercharger network; and up to 20 Gigafactories – mean tens of billions of dollars in new investment will be needed by a company already saddled with pricey capital expenditures.
Bullish shareholders and a number of <a href="http://www.investors.com/news/technology/tesla-rates-bull-case-on-model-3-puma-microchip-price-targets-hiked/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">equity analysts remain upbeat</a> on Tesla’s growth potential, so much so that there seems to be little concern the company’s endless need for funds keeps pushing any shot at profitability farther into the future.
“From its beginning Tesla has always been seeking more capital, so much so it’s been on the razor’s edge at times,” Ed Kim, a long-time industry analyst for AutoPacific in Tustin, California, told Forbes. “That’s not going to stop. In fact, it looks like it’s going to continue to be integral to the company culture.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/06/05/elon-musk-left-worker-safety-autopilot-long/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Elon Musk Left Worker Safety On Autopilot Too Long</a>
Tesla closed at $370 on June 8, its highest ever, and capped a 73% gain since the start of the year. Its market capitalization stands at nearly $62 billion, well ahead of considerably larger General Motors or Ford on that basis. Those century-old automakers had global vehicle sales of more than 9 million units and 6.6 million units, respectively, in 2016, while Tesla delivered fewer than 80,000.
<blockquote>“Its valuation is crazy high because investors see so much potential in Tesla. One of the ways to continue to keep that valuation high is to keep talking about the future and unveil ever more grandiose plans,” Kim said. “It basically keeps pushing the message: “We’re going big. We practically own the future.”</blockquote>
The stock&#8217;s spike has also once again ginned up activity by short investors, a common target of Musk&#8217;s wrath. Currently, Tesla is the most shorted stock, according to a <a href="https://www.s3partners.net/Research/BestWorst10.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">report by S3 Partners</a>. &#8220;These guys want us to die so bad they can taste it,&#8221; he said in a Tweet on Thursday.
Tesla’s wild ride from Silicon Valley garage startup in the early 2000s to a global benchmark for electric cars has been powered as much by the billions of dollars raised in stock and debt sales as Musk’s intoxicating vision for the future.
It’s also approaching an important milestone with the release of the $35,000 Model 3 sedan, Tesla’s first widely affordable electric car, in about a month. That product has been a central goal for Musk since he laid out Tesla’s <a href="https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Master Plan</a> in 2006.
Yet at both the annual meeting in Mountain View, California, this week, and on Tesla’s earnings call in May, he seemed to temper expectations for the car. He again reminded listeners that the Model S will always be a much nicer Tesla, and noted that order configurations for Model 3, at least initially, will be limited to color and wheel size.
He also noted that the Model Y, coming in two to three years, will be better. “I am really excited about Model Y,” Musk said this week. “We are aiming for that to hit the roads in 2019, approximately. And probably the demand for Model Y will exceed the demand for Model 3.”
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He also talked up the Tesla Semi that will be shown in September, without detailing its pricing, production timing and range per charge.
“A lot of people don’t think you can do a heavy-duty long-range truck that’s electric, but we are confident that this can be done,” Musk said. However, the prototype has been shown “to a number of the organizations that buy heavy-duty trucks and they all love it. They just want to know how many can they buy and how soon.”
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The biggest expense on Musk’s to-do list for Tesla is a plan to eventually build as many as 20 Gigafactories to make lithium-ion batteries and other components. The first one, a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2016/07/27/inside-teslas-gigafactory-a-crazy-idea-takes-shape-in-nevada/#651a72574d9b" target="_self">sprawling $5 billion facility near Reno</a>, Nevada, though partially completed is supplying battery packs.
“In terms of how many factories are in the works, we’re really giving serious consideration to three factory locations right now, but we’re going to try to keep our powder dry until we’re confident of the locations and the timing,” Musk told a rapt audience. “Ultimately, there’s at least 10 of these around the world and maybe as much as 20.”
Barring setbacks, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2016/08/04/tesla-model-3-manufacturing/#17d80fed751b" target="_self">Musk wants those plants to be revolutionary</a>. He’s talked of a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/11/08/tesla-buying-germanys-grohmann-engineering-to-automate-accelerate-production/#1bb97b1a3354" target="_self">fully robotic production system</a> that will make Tesla a manufacturing gold standard in quality and efficiency. In advance of that, he also intends to have the company&#8217;s factories building vehicles at a rate of one million per year by 2020 – up from about 100,000 units of production this year.
Few CEOs can excite customers and shareholders about the future in quite the way Musk does, and it’s clear he understands the power of his brand.
What’s unclear is whether investors will ever tire of potential and begin to demand profit. &#8211; Written by Alan Ohnsman,  FORBES STAFF

Tag: Elon Musk Tesla

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